Scottish Olympic Team

The Scotsman reports on the Scottish Nationalists drive to ramp up the campaign:

Mr Salmond acknowledged that there might be some athletes who preferred to compete in a British team but that is why he wanted to consult the sports administrators, to find a way through. And he argued that more Scots would have the chance to compete at the highest level with a Scottish team. He claimed that polls had shown that 78 per cent of the population backed a Scottish team.

Mr Salmond claimed that, at the last Olympics Scotland sent one athlete for every 210,000 citizens while New Zealand sent one for every 26,000 citizens.

He said: "The key thing in an Olympics is about participation and allowing a maximum amount of Scots to participate at the highest level."

Mr Salmond's plan amounts to a warning shot, fired across the bows of the BOA, showing that it that it might end up in a much worse position if it continues in its attempts to field a British football team in 2012.

Do I detect a teensy bit of bias in the Scotsman's reporting:

"Mr Salmond claimed"

and

"He claimed that"

Well he's correct isn't he?

See Sporting Devolution and The Campaign for a Scottish Olympic Team